Spider veins or thread veins are a real problem because they can make you look less attractive, and they are fairly common in women of 50 or over, and occur in about 20% of women in their 20s.

The big questions are:

What are spider veins?
How to prevent spider veins?
How to get rid of spider veins?
Where to get rid of spider veins?

What are spider veins

Spider veins or thread veins are tiny veins that become visible, and are found most in the legs and faces of women. However, men also suffer from them, especially if they have worked out of doors for many years. They are not harmful, but most women find them unsightly, and would prefer not to have them.

The cause of spider veins

The cause of spider veins, or thread veins, or to give them their technical term, Telangiectasia,  is not really known in detail, but there is some evidence to suggest that they can be prevented, or at least the severity of spider veins or thread veins can be lessened in some ways. For example, one cause of  spider veins or thread veins  is too much exposure to the sun over the years.  Many women like sunbathing, and want to look like the sun-tanned stars and celebrities they see on TV, but these days many of these celebrities rely on tanning creams to get their tan – they don’t want to get thread veins.

Certainly, not spending a lot of time in the sun is a good means of prevention. However, thread veins may be inherited – if your mother has them, you might get spider veins too. Another cause can be overuse of steroid creams. Well, it is a very bad idea to use steroid creams anyway, so avoid them as much as you can.

How to prevent spider veins

Pregnancy or oestrogen treatment can also increase your risk of getting spider veins, so avoid oestrogen treatment if you can. It is no coincidence that older women suffer more than younger ones. Spider veins show more by the time you get to 45 or 50 because with age, the skin becomes thinner and loses some of its collagen. They were there before, but now everyone can see them.

How to get rid of spider veins

If your spider veins are not too serious, here some things you can do:

Find a good concealer and use it under your make-up.
Use an artificial suntan creams which also make leg spider veins less easy to see.
Improve your diet to suit. Alcoholic drinks, very hot drinks and spicy foods can make spider veins more obvious.

Horse chestnut cream, which is available from health food stores,  is said to strengthen the spider. You need to be careful, and apply the cream gently to avoid damaging the skin.

You may find that these solutions are not enough for you, and so you need to consider how to get rid of spider veins. There are many alternative methods these days, but not all are very reliable, and you need to get advice before paying for any of them.

How to get rid of spider veins

Here are the best ways of getting rid of spider veins a nutshell:

Laser treatment generally works well for spider veins on the face.
Micro-sclerotherapy, which can be combined with laser treatment, is used a lot for spider veins on the legs.
High-intensity light treatment and electrolysis are also used to remove spider veins, but there is some doubt about their reliability.

Micro-sclerotherapy to remove spider veins in the legs

Micro-sclerotherapy is the less expensive of the two common treatments, and relies on the injection of a chemical into these tiny veins with very small needles. This binds the walls of the veins together, and is fairly straightforward except that great accuracy is needed owing to the narrowness of the veins.

You need to wear special compression stocking for a week or so, so you might want to do it when the weather is not to hot and you can wear jeans or pants. Usually, the spider veins disperse over about three weeks. This treatment is generally recommended for the legs, and not for the face. If the spider veins return – or other ones show – the treatment can be repeated.

Laser treatment for facial spider vein treatment

Laser treatment is reckoned to be the best treatment for spider veins on the face, but there are different types of laser treatment. Also, existing lasers work only on people with fairly light skin, as very dark skin blocks the tiny laser beam, which is not very powerful.

Some lasers, such as pulsed dye lasers, can produce bruising, which is if course only a temporary problem. However, if yo do not want people to know that you have had laser treatment, you might not want to use this method. On the other hand, the PTP (potassium titanyl phosphate) laser does not cause any bruising, and so is more user-friendly.

One important thing about laser treatment – or some other facial treatments – is that you need to protect your skin from the sun afterwards with a complete sun block. The laser can make the skin look a little different and leave small white scars. It can also be a painful or uncomfortable process. Laser treatment does not work that well on spider veins in the legs maybe because the veins are further below the skin.

Although electrolysis is offered as a treatment by many clinics, it is less effective than the other methods, and is more likely to leave you with scars.

The other new process which is highly promising is  high-intensity light treatment. This is not so intense, nor so precise as laser beams, but his means that a larger area can be covered -  up to 2 cm by 0.5 cm can be treated by a single flash. Unfortunately, this method appears to have quite a high failure rate, with some patients complaining of scarring, and others of no improvement. The treatment is also quite painful.

Overall, therefore, laser treatment, of the right type – and new, effective lasers may be introduced in due course – is recommended for facial treatment, and micro-sclerotherapy for legs.

You can get these treatments in clinics in many cities and states, and as you might expect spider vein removal Texas, and La Jolla spider vein treatment  are certainly easily attainable. In fact, you will be able to get spider vein treatment  in places are far removed as Denver, Orange County, Orlando, Salt Lake City, Saratoga Springs and Utah.

What Can You Expect From Spider Vein Treatment

Providing Health guides and information with the important elements of a human touch.   

They’re relatively harmless but unsightly. The removal of these purple tentacle-shaped blemishes is rarely a medical necessity and mostly a simple cosmetic procedure.

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